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Germany: Die Linke, Hesse and the `super election’ year

Oskar
Lafontaine

By
Duroyan Fertl

January 29, 2009 -- Germany kicked off a “super
election year” on January 18 when voters in the western German state of Hesse returned to the polls
for the second time in twelve months. The new election had become necessary
after months of negotiations to form a coalition government collapsed late last
year, when four parliamentary members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)
rebelled against a plan to form government with the assistance of the far-left
party, Die Linke.

The
SPD had benefited in last year’s poll from voter rejection of the racist
scapegoating and law-and-order politics of the ruling right-wing Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) and Prime Minister Roland Koch. Despite its vote,
however, the SPD still lacked the numbers to form government, even with its
preferred allies, the Green Party, and the SPD’s leader in Hesse, Andrea
Ypsilanti, turned to Die Linke for support.

In the lead-up to the election, however, Ypsilanti had bowed to pressure
from SPD hardliners and promised not to deal with the Die Linke. Many in the
dominant right wing of the SPD have an almost irrational dislike of the
left-wing party, partly fuelled by the fact that it formed in out of a fusion
of the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS – the successor to the former East
Germany or German Democratic Republic’s ruling party, the Socialist Unity
Party) with the WASG (Electoral Alternative for Social Justice and Jobs) – a
group made up of radical trade unionists and breakaways from the SPD, included
former SPD chairperson Oskar Lafontaine.

Nevertheless,
when neither the SPD nor the CDU were able to form government with their
preferred alliance partners – the Greens for the SPD and the radical
free-marketeers of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) for the CDU – Ypsilanti
backflipped on her promise in order to win government, securing an agreement
with the Greens and Die Linke, but losing support in her own party.

All
attempts to form government having fallen through, the Hesse parliament was
left with little choice but to dissolve itself, which it did on November 19, 2008,
forcing new elections, and the left-leaning Ypsilanti was forced to step aside
in disgrace, to be replaced as candidate with Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, a
relatively unknown SPD backbencher.

The January election resulted in a further disaster for
the SPD, which has been battling poor polling for months, and is desperate to
restore its fortunes by winning state government. Its support dropped thirteen
points to only 23 per cent – the worst result in the
party’s history, a fact made bearable only by the fact that the CDU’s showing
was equally unimpressive. They managed only a 0.4 per cent increase on last
year’s result of 36.8 per cent, making this its worst result in Hesse as
well.

While
voters punished both the SPD and CDU, the main beneficiaries in the election
were the minor parties – the Greens’ vote almost doubled to 14 per cent, while
support for the FDP rose from 10 to 16 per cent. Many more people simply
refused to vote, however, and the election saw voter turnout in Hesse drop to an all-time low
of 61 per cent.

While
the SPD lost considerable support, it is perhaps surprising that Die Linke –
which aims to win over disenfranchised SPD supporters – achieved only moderate
gains, increasing its support by 0.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent. While failing to
capitalise immediately from the SPD’s disarray, Die Linke has nevertheless
managed to hold on to the six parliamentary seats it won last year – still a
major breakthrough for the young party.

In
the end, then, after twelve months of caretaker government, incumbent CDU Prime
Minister Koch has been returned to power, in alliance with a strengthened FDP,
a political constellation that many see as the likely outcome in the federal
election due for later this year.

SPD in crisis

In
the wake of the Hesse results, the SPD remains in total disarray, having lost
considerable support due to its anti-social fee-market policies, for which it
lost government in 2005. Support has dropped to a dismal 22 per cent
nationwide, well behind the CDU on 37 per cent, and the SPD is desperate for
political victories to revive it in this important federal election year.

Having
replaced unpopular national leader Kurt Beck – who flip-flopped on the question
of working with Die Linke – with the machiavellian Franz Münterfering, the SPD
was hoping for a revival of its fortunes. However, as the unwilling junior
partners in a federal “Grand Coalition” government alongside the right-wing
CDU, the SPD is continuing to implement neoliberal policies, further alienating
its traditional support base, which is already suffering the effects of the
economic crisis.

When the German economy fell into recession late last year, the CDU/SPD
government’s response was to announce a €480 billion “bail-out” of the
country’s major banks. At the very same time, unemployment in Germany is expected to rise by
nearly 1 million over the next few months, and the country is facing a poverty
rate that is estimated to stand as high as 18 per cent, and it is rapidly
rising.

There are already suggestions that the country’s second largest private
bank, Commerzbank, is using its first €10 billion ($20 billion) handout simply
to finance a takeover bid of Dresdner Bank, while the major German banks are
already calling for a second “emergency bailout” to divest them of a claimed €300
in “toxic debts”.

At the same time, workers’ industrial action is on the rise in Germany. Last November, more
than 500,000 metalworkers held short strikes across southern Germany, demanding an 8 per cent
wage increase, and Lufthansa workers at Frankfurt airport are currently
threatening strike action, also over wages.

`Super election’ year

Germans will vote this year in sixteen polls, including
local, European and presidential elections, as well as state elections in Saarland, Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, before
the federal elections on September 27. In the former East Germany, Die Linke
maintains popular support of more than 25 per cent, where it has built on its
former PDS support base. In many of these eastern states, such as Thuringia and Saxony, Die
Linke is expected to outpoll the SPD, and support for Die Linke is expected to
grow as the economic crisis deepens.

In the west, however, the SPD also has reason to be
worried. While the PDS had failed to reach into the west, Die Linke has fared
better, winning seats in every west German state election it has contested
except Bavaria, which
has a more complicated electoral system

In the industrial centre of Saarland, which
is home to co-leader Oskar Lafontaine. Die Linke has polled as high as 29 per
cent – double SPD support in that state. There is a real chance that Die Linke
could poll high enough force the SPD into an alliance government – Die Linke’s
first in the western part of the country.

The `red
threat’

Since
its official formation in 2007, Die Linke has grown to the point that it is now
the third-biggest party in Germany, polling up to 15 per
cent nationally. This popularity results from Die Linke’s criticism of neoliberal
economic policies, and in its calls for greater social spending – on education,
health, housing and employment – and higher taxes for the rich.

Oskar
Lafontaine, who has been openly critical of the role of finance capital and
globalisation, recently called for income tax on all “shameful” incomes – those
above €600,000 ($750,000) – to be increased to 80 per cent. While many of
Lafontaine’s statements are simply anti-neoliberal, he as gone as far as to
identify “globalisation” with capitalism, and to call for the inclusion of
sections from the Communist Manifesto in
Die Linke’s constitution, stoking right-wing fears of a “communist revival”.

This
rhetoric – genuine or not – is also striking a positive a chord in Germany, where economic and
social problems have hit hard in recent years and enormous corruption scandals
have rocked the country. As the global economic crisis has hit, Germans have
found a renewed interest in Karl Marx, whose major work Capital has returned to the bestsellers list in Germany, and publishers have run
out of stock. Linksjugend – Die Linke’s leftwing youth organisation – recently
organised a national series of schools on the Marxist classic.

The
German state has been less than positive about the rise of Die Linke. A 2007
report from the Verfassungsschutz – a German secret service agency – indicated
that the government had placed Die Linke under surveillance, leading to a public
outcry, and a number of legal cases. Die Linke is also opposed to militarism
and calls for an end to German involvement in the war in Afghanistan, putting
it at odds with every other party in the German Bundestag, and with Germany’s
imperialist allies abroad.

A year of challenges

Despite
its rapid growth, however, Die Linke still faces challenges in uniting former
PDS members and social democrats, revolutionary socialists and left-wing
radicals around a common, militant, platform.

In
Berlin – where Die Linke is in coalition
government with the SPD – Die Linke has been involved in implementing a number
of the same neoliberal policies it claims to oppose. Klaus Lederer, Die Linke’s
leader in Berlin, spoke at a recent rally in support
of Israel’s war in Gaza, defying the party’s
official opposition to the onslaught.

Unionists
have also pointed to Die Linke’s contradictory positions in a number of recent
industrial disputes, and the party has been accused of pursuing an electoralist
strategy at the detriment of building the social and union movements.

These
problems are often ascribed to the influence of the more socially conservative
ex-members of the PDS within the party, but while Die Linke may be largely
dominated by the former PDS, it has attracted thousands of more-radical
members, including far-left groups, militant trade unionists and socialists,
and has become a far more diverse and effective organisation.

Despite
these challenges, and the ongoing media campaign against Die Linke as
“neo-communist”, including attempts to link leading members with the Stasi –
the former East Germany’s secret police – Die
Linke has shaken up the political landscape in Germany, and has forced the four
main parties to move to the left on a number of issues.

If
it can overcome its own internal problems and the attacks of the mainstream
media, Die Linke looks set to score major electoral wins this year, and force
German politics leftwards.